bio

KKane (Mika Kuokkanen) is a singer- songwriter from Helsinki. He also sings and plays guitar in a roots music group Hoedown and plays guitar in J.Karjalainen's Lännen-Jukka String Band as well as in Ninni Poijärvi Trio.

Besides Kkane songs, Kuokkanen has been writing songs for Hoedown and for other artists too, e.g. Eero Raittinen, Ninni Poijärvi and Sami Saari and he's been working on many albums as a musician.

KKANE - in his own words: "I was born and raised in Savo (an area in the middle of Finland). I got my first guitar around 5 - a little bit after my first hockey and baseball sticks. The first cassettes I bought were compilation albums of The Beatles and The Stones, which inspired me to write my first songs well before I actually learned how to play.

At 16 I made a choice between hockey and music. The decision to concentrate on music won although the opportunity to make goaltender on the national junior Finnish team would've been interesting. However, I have yet to feel regret about my choice...

In the 90's I lived in Jyväskylä for 5 years.While I was living there, on top of studying, playing in many bands and jamming at the famous club called Jazzbar, I wrote lots of songs. Many of them ended up on my first "Kkane"- album and some of them on the "From the Eastwing"- album too.

I moved to Helsinki in the Fall of ‘98 and drummer Harri Ala-Kojola asked me to join a rock'n'roll/R'n'B band called Helsinki-Texas. A little later me and Harri formed the first real Finnish rock'n'roll big band: Dirty Harry's Rock' n' Roll Big Band.

I met Ninni Poijärvi in the year of 2000. I sang backing vocals on her first "Viideltä"-album. I wrote bunch of songs to Ninni’s last two albums "Vapaapäivä" and "Virta" and I was working as a producer and as a musician on them too.We recorded "Virta" at Levon Helm’s studio in Woodstock, where we also recorded Eero Raittinen's album "Woodstock". We recorded those two albums in four days. While we were there, we also got a chance to play at the famous Midnight Ramble concert, it was amazing experience. We mainly do our gigs as a trio: Ninni, me and the wizard of pedal steel and dobro Olli Haavisto. With this trio we did an Australian tour together with a singer-songwriter Audrey Auld Mezera (Aus) in the Fall of 2006.

Hoedown is a roots music group. We did our first gig in 2002. Hoedown is: me, Ninni Poijärvi, Olli Haavisto, Esa Kaartamo, Masa Maijanen, Topi Kurki and Jarmo Nikku. Besides my songs and Esa's , we play covers from artists and bands like The Band, Little Feat, J.J Cale and Kasey Chambers. Our debut album "Hoedown" came out in the December of 2007. Album we recorded with, Tokela, the lead singer of Melrose, comes out in the May-08.

Once a month we have the Hoedown club at the Juttutupa restaurant in Helsinki. We've had this club since 2003 and there's no end in sight. At the Hoedown club we've had many of the finest Finnish singers as our guest stars: J.Karjalainen, Tuomari Nurmio, Caleb Klauder & Sammy Lind (USA), Maarit, Jonna Tervomaa, Kaartamo-Kettunen-Kuustonen, Dave Lindholm, Eero Raittinen, Tokela, Munsons, Tommi Viksten, Tuomo, Jukka Gustavson, Jorma Kääriäinen, Laura Närhi, Niko Ahvonen, Sami Saari, Tuure Kilpeläinen, Lasse Kurki...

My first solo album, "KKANE" was released in 2003 by Rubato Music.

After summer night jamming in the year of 2005, me and Ninni started to play old time music with J. Karjalainen. That was the beginning of the Lännen-Jukka String Band. In the Fall of 2007 we had an honour and a joy to visit the Great Lake areas and play for the Finnish-American people there. We also visited Thunder Bay, Canada. It was a trip to remember for all of us! Filmmaker Erkki Määttänen made a TV-documentary of the trip that has been shown several times in the Finnish national television, YLE.

My second solo album "From the Eastwing" (Mufarang International) will be released in April 2008.

KKANE, 04/2008